A Little Girl in Old Quebec by Amanda Minnie Douglas (miss read books txt) 📕

left thee alone and ill and hungry not so long ago."

Rose laughed gayly.

"If he had not left me I could not have taken the courage to crawl out. And no one else might have come. He wanted to see the ships. And Madame Dubray whipped him well, so that score is settled," with a sound of justice well-paid for in her voice.

"We will see"--nodding and laughing.

"Then can I tell him?"

"The elders had better do that. But there will be room enough in Quebec for him and us, I fancy," returned miladi.

Rose ran away. Pani was waiting out on the gallery.

"They will not mind," she announced. "But you must have some place to sleep, and"--studying him critically from the rather narrow face, the bony shoulders, and slim legs--"something to eat. Mere Dubray had plenty, except towards spring when the stores began to fail."

"I can track rabbits and hares, and catch fish on the thin places in the rivers. Oh, I shall not starve. But I'm hungry."

The wistful look in his eyes touched her.

"Let us find Wanamee," she exclaimed, leading the way to the culinary department.

Miladi had been surprised and almost shocked at the rough manner of living in this new France. The food, too, was primitive, lacking in the delicacies to which she had been used, and the manners she thought barbarous. But for M. Destournier and the courtesy of the Sieur she would have prayed to return at once.

"Wait a little," pleaded Laurent. "If there is a fortune to be made in this new world, why should we not have our share? And I can see that there is. Matters are quite unsettled at home, but if we go back with gold in our purses we shall do well enough."

Then the child had appealed to her. And it was flattering to be the only lady of note and have homage paid to her.

So the children sought Wanamee, and while Pani brought some sticks and soon had a bed of coals, Wanamee stirred up some cakes of rye and maize, and the boy prepared a fish for cooking. He was indeed hungry, and his eyes glistened with the delight of eating.

"It smells so good," said Rose. "Wanamee, bring me a piece. I can always eat now, and a while ago I could not bear the smell of food."

"You were so thin and white. And Mere Dubray thought every morning you would be dead. You wouldn't like to be put in the ground, would you?"

"Oh, no, no!" shivering.

"Nor burned. Then you go to ashes and only the bones are left."

"That is horrid, too. Burning hurts. I have burned my fingers with coals."

"But my people don't mind it. They are very brave. And you go to the great hunting grounds way over to the west, where the good Manitou has everything, and you don't have to work, and no one beats you."

"The white people have a heaven. That is above the sky. And when the stars come out it is light as day on the other side, and there are flowers and trees, and rivers and all manner of fruit such as you never see here."

"I'd rather hunt. When I get to be a man I shall go off and discover wonderful things. In some of the mountains there is gold. And out by the great oceans where the Hurons have encamped there are copper and silver. The company talked about it. Some were for going there. And there were fur animals, all the same."

Rose had been considering another subject.

"Pani," she began, with great seriousness, "you are not any one's slave now."

"No"--rather hesitatingly. "The Dubrays will never come back, or if they should next summer, with furs, I will run away again up to the Saguenay, where they will not look. But there are Indian boys in plenty where the tribes fight and take prisoners."

"You shall be my slave."

The young Indian's cheek flushed.

"The slave of a girl!" he said, with a touch of disdain.

"Why not? I should not beat you."

"Oh, you couldn't"--triumphantly.

"But you might be miladi's slave," suggested Wanamee, "and then you could watch the little one and follow her about to see that nothing harmed her."

"There shouldn't anything hurt her." He sprang up. "You see I am growing tall, and presently I shall be a man. But I won't be a slave always."

"No, no," said the Indian woman.

"That was very good, excellent," pointing to the two empty birch-bark dishes, which he picked up and threw on the coals, a primitive way to escape dish washing. "I will find you a heap more. I will get fish or berries, and oh, I know where the bees have stored a lot of honey in a hollow tree."

"You let them alone for another month," commanded Wanamee. "Honey--that will be a treat indeed."

Miladi had missed the sweets of her native land, though there they had not been over-plentiful, since royalty must needs be served first. They bought maple sugar and a kind of crude syrup of the Abenaqui women, who were quite experts in making it. When the sun touched the trees in the morning when the hoarfrost had disappeared, they inserted tubes of bark, rolled tightly, and caught the sap in the troughs. Then they filled their kettles that swung over great fires, and the fragrance arising made the forests sweet with a peculiar spiciness. It was a grand time for the children, who snatched some of the liquid out of the kettle on a birch-bark ladle, and ran into the woods for it to cool. Pani had often been with them.

"Let us go down to the old house," exclaimed Rose. "Do you know who is there?"

"Pierre Gaudrion. He gets stone for the new walls they are laying against the fort. And there are five or six little ones."

"It must be queer. Oh, let us go and see them."

She was off like a flash, but he followed as swiftly. Here was the garden where she had pulled weeds with a hot hatred in her heart that she would have liked to tear up the whole garden and throw it over in the river. She glanced around furtively--what if Mere Dubray should come suddenly in search of Pani.

Three little ones were tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the other in one of the journeys up to Tadoussac and brought her home.

The Sieur did not discourage these marriages, for the children generally affiliated with the whites, and if the colony was to prosper there must be marriages and children.

Rose stopped suddenly, rather embarrassed, for all her bravado.

"I used to live here," as if apologizing.

"Yes. But Mere Dubray was not your mother."

"No. Nor Catherine Arlac."

The woman shook her head. "I know not many people. We live on the other side. And the babies come so fast I have not much time. But Pierre say now we must have bigger space and garden for the children to work in. So we are glad when Mere Dubray go up to the fur country with her man. You were ill, they said. But you do not look ill. Did you not want to go with her?"

"Oh, no, no. And I live clear up there," nodding to the higher altitude. "M'sieu Hebert is there and Madame. And a beautiful lady, Madame Giffard. I did not love Mere Dubray."

"If I have a child that will not love me, it would break my heart. What else are little ones for until they grow up and marry in turn?"

"But--I was not her child."

"And your mother."

"I do not know. She was dead before I could remember. Then I was brought from France."

Suddenly she felt the loss of her mother. She belonged to no one in the world.

"Poor _petite_." She made a sudden snatch at her own baby and hugged it so tightly that it shrieked, at which she laughed.

"Some day a man will hug thee and thou wilt not scream," she said in good humor.

Pani came from round the corner and then darted back. The boy left his work and came forward.

"Who was that?" he asked. "My father said 'get an Indian boy to work in the garden.' I am making a chair for the little one. And I can't tell which are weeds. Yesterday I pulled up some onions and father was angry, but he could set them out again."

Rose laughed at that, and thought it remarkable that his father did not beat him.

"Pani might show you a little. He belongs to me now. We both used to work in the garden. Mere Dubray was always knitting and cooking."

Pani emerged again. "Yes, let us go," and Rose led the way, but she would have liked to throw herself down among the babies, who seemed all arms and legs.

"Can you read?" the boy said suddenly. "We have a book and I can read quite well. My father knows how. And I want to be a great man like the Sieur, and some of the soldiers. I want to know how to keep accounts, and to go to France some time in the big ships."

Rose colored. "I am going to learn to read this winter, when we have to stay in. But it is very difficult--tiresome. I'd rather climb the rocks and watch the birds. I had some once that would come for grains and bits of corn cake. And the geese were so tame down there by the end of the garden."

The rows of corn stood up finely, shaking out their silken heads, turning to a bronze red. Then there were potatoes. These were of the Dubrays' planting, as well as some of the smaller beds.

"M'sieu Hebert gave father some of these plants. He knows a great deal, and he can make all kinds of medicine. It is very fine to know a great deal, isn't it?"

"But it must be hard to study so much," returned Rose, with a sigh.

"I don't think so. I wish I had ever so many books like the Sieur and M. Hebert. And you can find out places--there are so many of them in the world. And do you know there are English people working with all their might down in Virginia, and Spanish and Dutch! But some day we shall drive them all out and it will be New France as far as you can go. And the Indians----"

"You can't drive the Indians out," exclaimed Pani decisively. "The whole country is theirs. And there are so many of them. There are tribes and tribes all over the land. And they know how to fight."

"They are fighting each other continually. M. Hebert says they will sweep each other off after a while. And they are very cruel. You will see the French do not fight the French."

Alas,